by Anna Burke
“We’ve got it,” he said when he saw us enter. Relief softened the monstrous tattoos on his face. “I’ll have enough to dose her by the afternoon.”
I burst into tears.
Miranda rubbed circles on my back while Kraken returned to work. I heaved great sobbing breaths. Harper had a chance. Not a huge one, but a chance.
••••
I slept fitfully, waiting for the sounds that would signify Kraken’s arrival with the medicine. Miranda lay awake beside me. Each time I started awake at a sound, I found her lying on her back, one arm around me, her eyes on the plex above us. Her bicep was hard against the back of my neck. I burrowed into her and felt the rigidity of her body soften. How many sailors have you lost to infection? I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t. One was too many. Harper was healthy and strong, but healthy and strong people died the same as everyone else. I thought of Orca, who had lost most of the people she loved. I thought of Miranda, whose parents had been executed for her crimes.
Save crew members, I’d never lost anyone important to me. My father didn’t count—I’d barely known him, and that grief was old. Jeanine, Dev, and Annie were complicated by guilt, but they hadn’t felt like family. At least, not yet. Jeanine might have, in a few more months, but we hadn’t been granted that luxury—and even so, she haunted me.
I didn’t know how to cope with this panic. This helplessness. Part of me wanted to kick Orca away so I could keep these moments with Harper to myself. Another part of me wanted to hide at the opposite end of the ship.
“Try to sleep,” Miranda said into my hair.
“Like you are?”
She didn’t answer. I rolled onto my other side and studied the curtain.
Long hours later, Kraken’s low voice rumbled Harper’s name. I tumbled out of my bunk. He’d printed a syringe, and Harper watched as he slid the needle into her vein.
“You’re good at that,” she said. Orca had propped her up into a sitting position, and one look at her cheeks told me the fever had returned.
“I’ve had some practice.”
“Is there anything you can’t do?”
Harper’s teasing twisted me from the soles of my feet to the tears prickling again in my eyes. Of course she’d joke. Of course she’d try to lighten this for the rest of us as her body burned itself out.
“And that’s it. Anticlimactic, right?” He withdrew the needle and pressed his thumb over the bead of blood. “Hold pressure here.”
Orca covered the spot with her own thumb. Our lives were so eager to spill. I wished she’d clamp her whole hand around Harper’s arm, stemming the flow and binding her soul to her flesh. I trembled behind Kraken until Harper’s glassy eyes found me. “Don’t look like such a noodle.”
A watery smile was the best I could manage. “Hi, Harp.”
“I can still kick your ass. Come here.”
Kraken moved out of the way so I could obey. I settled on the ground beside her bunk and hugged my knees to my chest. “As your captain, I could order you to get better.”
“Oh yeah?”
I wasn’t imagining the rattle in her chest this time.
“Yeah. In fact, Harper Comita, I demand that you recover immediately.”
“Sure thing, Cap’n.”
“That’s right.” I squeezed her good hand. “Don’t make me flog you.”
“You’d be into it. Don’t lie.” Her eyes closed as she spoke.
“Shh. Rest.”
I stayed sitting by her until Miranda touched my shoulder.
“It’s sunset. You need to eat something.”
I rose reluctantly and followed her into the common area, where Kraken had arranged algae patties on a platter. They filled my mouth, but I didn’t taste them. Miranda ate hers with the same methodical precision.
“We’ll know if it helped in a few hours. Until then, you’re captain, which means not letting it consume you.”
“I’m really not. Captain, I mean.” I swallowed the last bite of food, hardly noticing the other people in the room. Miranda fielded their questions about Harper’s health. Finn patted me on the back as he walked past, and Nasrin grumbled about the things she’d do to Ching, given the chance. Miranda had told me she’d assigned Nasrin to Ching as a guard with the instruction to infiltrate any mutiny, if possible, which explained her role in our imprisonment, but this development was just background noise. I didn’t care about anything but Harper.
Only the helm offered relief. Miranda brought the trawler up to the surface whenever possible so I could see the stars. The atmosphere wasn’t clear enough to risk going on deck, but few clouds obscured the sky and I could see what I needed to see through the plex. North hovered on the periphery of my senses—closer than it had felt in weeks, but still too far away to touch.
South, then. Ironic that my eyes now sought the Crux constellation, searching for the Southern Cross, when I’d been plotting a course for Crux station only days before. Fatigue ate at my vision. One day I’d have to reckon with the decisions I’d made under duress back on Man o’ War. But not tonight.
The charts for these seas were largely blank, save for lines of latitude and longitude. No one had plotted common storm patterns or dead zones—those I would have to guess, without any guidance from my internal compass or the currents. I hated it.
This is what it’s like for everyone else.
I wasn’t everyone else.
Miranda didn’t say much as evening wore into night. We surfaced periodically to check our progress against the stars, and I hurt my eyes still further straining to pierce the darkness for swarms and ships. Our sonar didn’t pick anything up, but . . . well. It hadn’t last time we’d come south, either.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Miranda when my bladder threatened mutiny. I closed my eyes as I walked down the hall, feeling along the rugged plex while my abused eyeballs rested. This stretch of ship was familiar. My feet knew the path, and they led me to the common area and the sleeping quarters.
I paused at Harper’s bunk.
“Orca?”
The curtain moved on its track, and Orca’s eyes glinted in the low light. “Her fever broke.”
“Oh thank Neptune.” My knees buckled as relief cut them out from under me. Harper. Harper would live. Harper stood a chance at living. I repeated this to myself as I might have repeated the cardinal points.
“She’s due for another dose soon.”
“Is she?” My smile threatened to crack my jaw.
“When we find Ching—and we will, that motherfucker—I’m going to cut off her fingers and stick them in a bucket of shit.”
“I’ll hold the bucket.”
“I’ll take the shit.”
We laughed, and it felt so fucking good I barely felt the wetness on my cheeks.
Chapter Thirteen
“Rose.” I sat up, and only Miranda’s reflexes saved me from whacking my skull on my bunk and worsening my concussion. Her hand caught my forehead and slowed my ascent.
“Yeah?” I yanked the curtain back and blinked up at Orca. The biolights were bright with daylight, which meant I’d most likely been in the middle of deep sleep.
“Swarm.”
I groaned out a series of unintelligible curses and fumbled for my pants.
“Get us out of it,” Miranda said to Orca.
Orca and I looked at her.
“I’m on it,” I said.
“No. You need to learn to delegate. Orca’s fully capable of basic calculations.”
Orca glanced between us.
“But—” I said.
“What are you going to do about it that she can’t do?” Miranda put no malice into the words, but I winced anyway.
“Right.” Orca drew out the word. “So, I guess I’ll just . . . go around them?”
“No. Go under. Most fields only extend a few miles.” I rubbed sleep from my eyes. “How’s Harper?”
“Better.”
“That was worth being woken up fo
r then.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“You’re dismissed,” said Miranda. Orca nodded and turned on her heel.
“Should you do that?” I asked when the curtain enclosed us once more.
“What, tell her to fuck off in the middle of a REM cycle? I was serious. Learn to delegate.”
“Maybe you should be captain then.” I shimmied back beneath the blanket. “And while you’re at it, take up less space.”
“Fine.” She rolled over to show me her back.
“Mere—”
“Go to sleep.”
I did.
She didn’t.
I knew this, because when Orca roused us at the end of her shift, Miranda’s face was drawn and the circles beneath her eyes were darker than ever.
Harper joined us at the table for the evening meal.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” said Nasrin.
“Don’t insult Seamus,” said Finn. “He’s got better taste.”
“In honor of your health, I’ve made poached snails.” Groans accompanied Kraken’s announcement. “Don’t tell me after all your complaints, you’ve come to appreciate my roasts?”
“Your roaches can fuck themselves for being uglicious.” Harper gestured imperiously at the pot and narrowed her eyes at Orca. “Now serve me my snails.”
I turned to Miranda to share my amusement, but she was busy moving snails around her own plate and didn’t meet my eye.
“A toast?” Nasrin suggested.
“You can take the bartender off the mainship, but you can’t . . . wait.” Finn tapped his chin. “That joke doesn’t really work, does it?”
“You can take the ‘specialist’ out of ‘communications’ where you’re concerned,” said Nasrin. “Now put some rum in that hole of yours and shut up.”
She poured a generous round—though I held my hand over my mug, as navigating with a damaged brain was hard enough—and I felt hopeful for the first time since we’d docked at Trench.
This was my crew. This had always been my crew. Not Man o’ War, and not even North Star, but these ridiculous, messy, hardheaded fools. I loved each and every one of them.
Miranda knocked back her drink and scooped Seamus, who lurked around our feet in the hopes of discovering dropped snails, into her lap. Her scarred hands ruffled the thick orange and white-tipped fur around his neck.
“I’m so relieved,” I said to her as we settled into the helm for the night shift. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this relieved about anything in my life.”
“She’s not out of the swarm yet.”
“But her fever broke and she’s lucid.”
Miranda shrugged. Anger laced my bloodstream with its poison.
“Can’t you even pretend to be happy about that?”
She tossed me a weary look. “I am happy she’s doing better. But I’ve seen more cases of sepsis than you have, and when I tell you she’s not out of the swarm yet, I mean it.”
The memory of her harsh Go to sleep stung all over again. I didn’t care that she looked exhausted—we’d all lost things. I couldn’t navigate without charts, and my head still hurt all the time. Harper had nearly died. So what if she’d lost a ship? No one had asked her to abdicate her captaincy. I certainly hadn’t asked to be saddled with it.
“Harper will pull through.”
“We’ll see.”
“Fuck you, Mere.”
Her hands gripped the controls tightly, bleaching the scars on the backs of her knuckles, but she didn’t respond. I weighed the pros and cons of storming off and decided, with all the regret in the sea, that I couldn’t. Captains didn’t sulk, and my crew had elected me. I owed them that much, even if I thought they were wrong. I turned my attentions to my charts instead and focused on the memory of Harper’s smile at dinner. Miranda didn’t know shit. Harper would be fine, and I remembered all over again the reasons I’d told Miranda I needed time.
Our stony silence lasted into the night. A cloud of siphonophores billowed beneath us off to port, and I watched their bioluminescent glow until it faded. Miranda didn’t apologize. This didn’t surprise me. Her apology our first day on the trawler had been shocking enough; Miranda Stillwater didn’t like admitting when she was wrong, perhaps because that would mean recognizing she’d erred in the first place. It must be nice inside her brain: everything neatly labeled, black or white, with no confusing middle ground to swallow her whole.
We made better time than Man o’ War, thanks to our small size and the retrofitted engine. I hoped raiders like the ones who had given me my head injury would be dissuaded by our appearance. Drifter trawlers contained little of value. We weren’t worth it.
Unless Ching had put out a reward for our capture.
She wanted Miranda, either for revenge or some other purpose. Was stripping her of rank and ship enough? I didn’t know, and so I kept us moving, though what—if anything—we’d find in the south, I didn’t know. A heading was a heading. We had nowhere else to go.
••••
Orca pulled me into the storage bay as I made my way back from the helm the next morning. I’d given Miranda a head start. Neither of us had acknowledged our spat, and the silence had only grown in the interim.
“Is Harper okay?” I asked as Orca shut the door. Crates of dry goods like rice and, knowing Kraken, explosives were stacked so tightly around us there was little room to stand without touching.
“She’s an idiot.”
“Is that a yes?”
“She says she’s feeling much better and wants to be reinstated on shift duty.” Orca paced as much as the space allowed. “She won’t listen to me.”
Frustration turned her words into a desperate whine. I sympathized. No one listened to me, either. Pushing the petty thought aside, I raked my hand through my hair and considered our options. Harper returning to work was out of the question, though my heart leapt at her recovery. The real question was how to convince her of this without entrenching her deeper in her position. The woman was almost as stubborn as Miranda. Orca, to her credit, at least respected authority, even if she sometimes punched me in the face. Harper had grown up the daughter of one of the most powerful admirals in the Archipelago. Comita hadn’t gone easy on her, but there were things Harper could get away with no one else could.
We weren’t on North Star anymore, however. Maybe her antipathy to command had lessened without her mother’s protection. It was all I had to go on.
“She might if I make you my first mate.”
“What?”
“Chief of engineering—not that it means much with a crew this small—ranks below first mate.”
“I assumed you’d choose Miranda.”
“Well, you thought wrong.” I didn’t tell her Miranda had refused me. Orca deserved to keep some of her pride, if nothing else.
“You sure?”
“What, do you want me to choose Nasrin?”
“Neptune, no, she’d get off on flogging us once a week. I’ll be your first mate. I still don’t think Harper will listen to me.”
“And you think she’ll listen to me? She’s been beating me up since we were twelve.” I paused. “Why do I surround myself with women who do that?”
“Because you’re a masochist. But you’re captain. Make her listen.”
“As if being captain means anything.”
Orca gripped my shoulder. “It won’t mean anything if you don’t make it mean something.”
“I’m the least intimidating person on this ship. The roaches look more authoritative than I do.”
“Don’t . . . don’t talk about them.”
“Maybe I should get a roach tattoo around my biceps.”
She dropped her hand and edged away from me. “That’s fucking nasty.”
“You know Kraken would do it.”
“Do you really want to go by Rosy the Roach the rest of your life?”
“It’s better than jelly.”
“Is it, though? Anyw
ay, talk to Harper.”
“I will.”
“And . . . thanks for making me first mate.”
She walked out of the storage room before I could read her expression. I shook my head. Pirates were even more prickly about their pride than Archipelageans.
Miranda cocked an eyebrow when Orca and I entered the common area together. I ignored the judgment in her stare and zeroed in on Harper, who chatted animatedly with Nasrin at the table.
“Orca says you want to be reinstated,” I said to Harper.
Harper beamed up at me, all smiles. “Obviously I won’t touch anything, but I can monitor systems, and—”
“And no.”
“Come on, Rose.”
“You were nearly dead less than twenty-four hours ago, and your arm still looks like a wreck.”
It did. The redness had receded, but only marginally, and the skin oozed around her bandage.
“I’m bored.”
“I’ve spent most of the last month locked in a room. Don’t talk to me about boredom.”
“That’s different. Your brain got busted. My brain is fine, which is why—”
“I said no, and Orca is my first mate so from now on if she tells you no, you’ll listen to her.”
I pitched all the authority I could into the words. Harper blinked, and the gathered crew paused. Only Miranda didn’t turn to watch. She remained sitting with her back to me at the table, her hands clasped around a mug of rum.
“Who put an eel up your ass?” Harper’s eyebrows contracted the way they always did before a fight.
“I mean it. We have a limited supply of antibiotics. I’m not going to waste them on you if you can’t be bothered to take care of yourself.”